Awesome report - from the front lines which (as Barack told us today) are now officially everywhere each of us stands. Great interviews with other attendees -

Like the other demo veterans posting I was remembering big pro-choice marches, with all of us in white, fighting with the Park Police about estimated numbers (they based their counts on photos taken at 4pm after most of us had ducked into coffee shops), and how darn long it took to move a block but how it didn't seem to matter, it was just important to be there. (I kept thinking, "I bet the Park Police will do a fair count this time.") I know we need more than marches but - thank you to you and everyone who was there to witness and report back.

At our place my sister and my friend Margery had the most zingy remarks, and as a gay Christian I was pleasantly surprised by some of Rick Warren's prayer, but when I started weeping with relief was when Barack mentioned "the Constitution and the rule of law." Now of course we have to work even harder on all this stuff, but maybe there won't be this feeling (on the part of progressives) of being so alone. At least we're next to a lucid centrist and we can tug on his administration...

I also really enjoyed your piece about the warmth towards Hillary at the Emily's List Gala. Talk about healing!

It seems that since Salon has downsized you personally have been working extra hard, while the quality has gone UP (if that were even possible). Many of us are reading every word even more maniacally than before (my primary news source during 5 years overseas). Again, thank you!

The photo caption says "Cambridge University in Michigan" but I can find no record of such a place. Actually those pews and columns behind Updike (and the light fixtures and the plaque above the door and ... but I'm boring you) suggest the interior of the Memorial Church at Harvard, which is in Cambridge Massachusetts - could the AP person have had very sloppy handwriting? (Cambridge U, MI for Cambridge, MA etc)

Now back to enjoying the article...

Terrific article. I can't help but remember that this subject of "attention" (including the redemptive effects of learning to pay focused attention) was what David Foster Wallace (whose work YOU turned me on to) was working with when he died - and what he thought America needed. At least that's how I read the obit in the New Yorker...

So let's talk about this some more...

(Yes it's embarrassing that I hadn't read DFW but better late than never. Full disclosure: back in the day I had issues with your pieces on electronic literature - not that you said it wasn't ready for prime time, because it wasn't, just with your approach to it - but for the past few years I have enjoyed all your pieces 200%. I wish I could get away from these parentheses...)

Thank you for your ongoing hard work calling stuff to our attention!

Dear Wondering,

Cary wrote a KILLER column and reply. Very well thought out and poetic and all the reasons why we read him. However, I am not a professional advice columnist and so I can just come out and say it, based on personal experience always and 4eva.

Nail biting and other appearance things are so much more likely to be INTERNAL issues. She was afraid of looking grown up or sexy or healthy or professional or ??. Perhaps she didn't even like herself. So many possible reasons from before you and she even got involved.

The only way this involves you, is that her INTERNAL issue(s) may also have prevented her from being able to love you and let you love her, as fully as she would have been able to, if she'd addressed them at the time you were together. And this is something to mourn and I mourn with you.

[When you said, "I wish you'd stop biting your nails," I am guessing that on a deeper level you were saying, "I wish you cared about yourself as much as I care about you, enough to take better care OF yourself..." or something like that.]

But it seems like she has addressed some of them now and that's something to celebrate too. Your friendship with her now, and her parenting of her kids, can reap the benefits.

Off the soapbox now, with very best regards from Australia,